These last seven words, (which scarcely seem of a piece with the rest of the sentence,) we confess have always seemed a sufficient answer to the badly-expressed speculative difficulty which immediately precedes; a difficulty, be it observed, which does not depend _at all_ on the popular advancement of Geographical knowledge; for it was urged with the self-same force anciently, as now; and was met by Bp. Butler, almost in the self-same words[79], upwards of a hundred years ago. But Mr. Wilson to our surprise and sorrow proceeds:--"We cannot be content to wrap this question up and leave it for a mystery, as to what shall become of those myriads upon myriads of non-Christian races. First, if our traditions tell us, that they are involved in the curse and perdition of Adam, and may justly be punished hereafter individually for his transgression, not having been extricated from it by saving faith,--we are disposed to think that our traditions cannot herein fairly declare to us the words and inferences from Scripture; but if on examination it should turn out that they have,--we must say, that the authors of the Scriptural books have, in those matters, represented to us their own inadequate conceptions, and not the mind of the SPIRIT of GOD." (pp. 153-4.) I forbear to dwell upon the grievous spectacle with which we are thus presented. Here is a Clergyman of the Church of England deliberately proposing the following dilemma:--Either the Prayer Book is incorrect in its most important doctrinal inferences from Holy Scripture; or else, the Authors of Holy Scripture itself are incorrect in their statements. The morality of one who declares that he finds himself placed between the horns of this dilemma, and yet retains his office as a public teacher in the Church of England,--it is painful to contemplate. But this is only _ad hominem_. The Reverend writer's difficulty remains.